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In a blistering speech to Liberal partisans in Ottawa on Wednesday, Rae called for Harper to resign and described Mulcair as a “mini-Harper.” He also bluntly and repeatedly accused both leaders on Wednesday of not telling the truth.

“Stephen Harper is not fit to be the Prime Minister of Canada,” Rae said in a 45-minute speech denouncing the government’s handling of the F-35 fighter jet purchase — focus of a scathing auditor general’s report this week.

Rae said it is simply impossible to believe that Harper, famed for micro-management, was unaware of the litany of waste, missteps and messes that Auditor General Michael Ferguson found in the F-35 procurement process.

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“He cannot now pretend that he was just the piano player in the brothel who didn’t have a clue as to what was really going on upstairs,” Rae said.

What’s more worrying, Rae said, was that the Conservatives had already been slammed for misleading Parliament on the F-35 costs before the last election and that Harper said throughout the 2011 campaign that the government had a “contract” to prevent cost overruns.

The auditor general confirmed that Parliament had been misled and that the cost overruns could run to $10 billion.

“That, my friends, is what any kid in the schoolyard would call a lie,” Rae said. “This is about how he won an election.”

Rae also devoted part of his speech to condemnation of the NDP and its stunt in Parliament this week that prevented any other parties from speaking in the budget debate. Instead, NDP finance critic Peter Julian did a one-man speaking marathon until the clock ran out.

The Liberal leader said this is a glimpse into the kind of leadership style that Mulcair is bringing to the NDP.

“Mr. Mulcair would not know the truth if he ran into it in bright daylight,” Rae told reporters, when asked about Mulcair’s claims that the Liberals supported the budget and had nothing to say about it.

And, in a deliberately provocative play on the words of Jack Layton’s deathbed letter last summer, Rae said in his speech: “We’ve now moved to the world where anger is better than love, arrogance is now better than humility and petulance is much stronger than respect.” (The late NDP leader had written, just before his death of cancer last summer: “. . . love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.”)

Speaking to reporters later Mulcair said, “I think he’s having a bit of a tough week.”

“I believe that Mr. Rae is quite concerned with the arrival of Mr. (Justin) Trudeau on the scene and the recent attention being paid to him.”

Rae’s speech also appeared to be a reply to the newest wave of Conservative attack ads being run on TV the past few weeks — as well as the long string of attack ads against previous Liberal leaders.

Rae picked some of the select phrases from past Conservative attacks — on former leaders Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion — and turned them back on Harper in his speech on Wednesday.

Asked why he was ratcheting up the attacks on his fellow leaders in the Commons, Rae said that he believes it’s time for Liberals to fight back against efforts to silence, ridicule or marginalize them.

“This is a government that has made a point of trying to decapitate everyone in the opposition,” Rae said.

In his speech, he warned Liberals: “We have to persevere through the personal attacks, because they are intended to change the subject and to put critics on their back foot. This is what bullies and control artists do.”

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